Cheap Eats 2015: Bob’s Shanghai 66

Where we get our favorite across-the-board Chinese food.

Pierce the dumpling with your chopstick and tilt the soup into your spoon--or just bite off the top of the dumpling and slurp away. Photograph by Scott Suchman

About Bob's Shanghai 66

cuisines
Chinese
Location(s)
305 N Washington St
Rockville, MD 20850
305 N Washington St
Rockville, MD 20850

If you’ve been around long enough, you might remember when this was Bob’s Noodle 66, in its heyday one of the best Chinese places in the area. That 66 is still around—restarted by owner Bob Liu when he returned from a hiatus in Taiwan and moved around the corner—but this is the 66 you need to remember. Though slow to find its form, the high-volume, cash-only kitchen has been impressive of late, rendering its long list of Chinese and Taiwanese standards with a clarity and depth that most of its competitors can’t touch. The saucing is, almost without exception, clean and tight, making even a simple stir-fry—bean curd and pork, for instance, with long, thin bands of curd that have the slipperiness and chew of egg noodles, or tiny shrimp in a surprisingly balanced sweet-and-sour chili sauce—a memorable order.

Cuisine: Chinese/Taiwanese

Where you can find it: 305 N. Washington St., Rockville; 301-251-6652

Also good: Dry noodle with minced pork; double-cooked pork belly; salt-and-pepper pork chops.


Ann Limpert
Executive Food Editor/Critic

Ann Limpert joined Washingtonian in late 2003. She was previously an editorial assistant at Entertainment Weekly and a cook in New York restaurant kitchens, and she is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education. She lives in Petworth.

Food Editor

Anna Spiegel covers the dining and drinking scene in her native DC. Prior to joining Washingtonian in 2010, she attended the French Culinary Institute and Columbia University’s MFA program in New York, and held various cooking and writing positions in NYC and in St. John, US Virgin Islands.